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This Holiday wreath project is sure to impress your friends and family, not to mention the UPS delivery guy, as they approach your front door! Here’s how to do it:

The project uses an Arduino microcontroller with the Adafruit MP3 shield and a Parallax PIR motion sensor to detect if someone is approaching the doorway. It then plays a custom greeting pre-recorded and pitched to sound like a jolly elf, followed by a random Christmas song. The song(s) will keep playing as long as the PIR sensor picks up motion within 15 seconds.

Get into the Holiday spirit with this cool, DIY LED Christmas Tree!

When it comes to mad maker skills, soldering is among the most important and most versatile a young do-it-yourselfer can have.

If you or your budding maker aren’t familiar, there are great guides to getting started with a soldering iron though, there’s nothing that quite beats hands-on practice on a small project.

These festively themed kits combine two Christmas tree shaped PCBs along with all of the components needed to create a cool, futuristic sparkling Holiday decoration. The kits are available for as little as $3.50 and come with all the components required to get started.

Step 1: Schematic and Theory of Operation

Each of the 10K resistors and 47uF capacitors form an RC oscillator that periodically pushes the associated transistor on. The three sets of RC oscillators are transistors are connected in a loop to keep them cycling out of phase which makes the blinking appear random around the tree. When the transistor is “on” current passes through a bank of 6 LEDs and their 1K current limiting resistor causing that bank to blink on.

If you’re looking for an adventure, trying adjusting the value of one (or more) of the 10K resistors a bit to change the blink rate of the LEDs.

Step 2: Populating the Resistors

Begin soldering by stuffing the resistors. Resistors are not polarized in any way, which means that you can insert them in either direction.

Use a resistor colour code chart or app to identify the different resistor values and make sure to insert them into the correct holes.

In some of 3D Christmas Tree kits, a couple of the 1K resistors are replaced with 330-ohm resistors. When available, the 330-ohm resistors should be used for R2 instead of the specified 1K resistor. According to the numbering system that we have used, R2 is the current limiting resistor for the green LED bank (D1-D6). Using this lower resistance allows the green LEDs to glow a tiny bit brighter, which can mitigate the fact that green LEDs often appear a little dimmer than the red and yellow LEDs.

In the end, the value of the current limiting resistors (R2, R4, R6, and R7) is somewhat forgiving and can anywhere around 300 ohms to 3K.

The value for R7 is specified on the higher end (at 2K) because R7 is the current limiting resistor for the red LED D19 at the top of the tree. Since D19 does not blink, it may appear much brighter, so the higher 2K resistance balances the brightness a bit with respect to the other LEDs.

Step 3: Transistors

When soldering in the transistors, be sure to align the flat side of the transistor to the flat side of the white outline on the printed circuit board (PCB). This ensures that the transistor is wired in the correct direction.

Step 4: Capacitors

Solder in the electrolytic capacitors. These are definitely polarized. There is usually a “-” marking along one side of the can and also the longer lead is positive while the shorter lead is negative. Be certain that the positive and negative terminals are matched to the indications on the PCB silk screen printing. As a double check, the solder pad for the positive pin is often square, while the negative pad is round. The square pad is sometimes called the “pin one indicator” and this applies to multi-lead packages like DIP integrated circuits as well. Leave enough slack in the leads to be able to bend the capacitor over onto its side once it is soldered into place.

Step 5: LEDs

Diodes (including LEDs) are also polarized. Be certain to observe that the long lead is positive and the short is negative. Again observe the silk screen printing on the PCB or that the positive solder pad is square. When soldering the LEDs, be sure they keep the same colours grouped together with a common resistor and transistor as shown in the schematic and parts list. If you attempt to drive mixed colour LEDs with the same current limiting resistor and switching transistor, you will likely find that one colour glows brighter and the other colour doesn’t light up at all or only very dimly.

When soldering the LEDs into place, leave slack in the leads so that the LED can be bent off to the side once it is attached. Note that we have not yet soldered in the D19 LED at the very tip of the tree.

Step 6: Test each PCB

Once each of the Tree PCBs is fully populated (except for the D19 LED at the tip), they can be tested by placing about 5VDC onto the “+” and “-” pads at the very bottom of the tree.

For example, you can place some AA batteries into the battery housing and touch the wires to the correct pads on the PCB.

The LEDs should blink and cycle with colourful holiday goodness. If they do not, check the polarities (directions) of the power wires, the LEDs, the caps, and the transistors. If you were careful with all of the polarities while soldering, there should be no problems.

Step 7: Base PCB

Solder the power button and the power terminal onto the Base PCB. When inserting the power button, the notched side of the button should face the nearest edge of the PCB as shown. A piece of resistor lead that was trimmed off earlier may be wrapped around the power terminal and soldered to the PCB as a stain relief to make the connector more robust while inserting the power plug.

The battery pack can be bolted into the base PCB as shown. The wires from the battery pack can be fed up into the PCB trimmed and soldered to the power pads.

Step 8: Final Assembly

Slide the two tree halves into one another being careful to bend any of the components (such as the transistors) our of the way if they catch onto one another. Once the sides are aligned, solder the pads together where the halves touch.

Now the top LED (D19) can be attached and trimmed.

Lastly, insert the tree into the base PCB being careful to observe the “+” and “-” designations on all three PCBs. Solder the tree to the base PCB.

Your 3D LED Tree can be powered from the battery pack OR the power terminal USB adapter. When the power terminal is inserted, the batteries are out of the circuit, so it is fine to leave the batteries installed while using the USB power adapter.

Rolloween: Inspiring Montreal makers step up to create the ultimate Halloween costume making one boy happier than ever to trick or treat!

The Maker Movement embraces just about any challenge and looks for the best DIY way to shake things up and overcome it. In this case, a group of eager makers stepped in to produce Chad, an exciting, remarkably real not to mention practical Halloween costume solution for young Émile.

Unlike years past when Émile, born with a disability that requires him to use a wheelchair, has found Halloween to be a particularly challenging celebration, thanks to a group of Montréal makers this year he will have THE ultimate in Halloween costumes for himself as well as his wheelchair.

Having pulled together imagination, creativity, serious maker skills, as well as generosity and commitment, this group of makers created a dragon in his castle, or, simply, Chad.

Beyond Magic: A Dragon Comes to Life

Halloween costumes are not designed for children to wear sitting down and for those people requiring an assisted mobility device, getting around towns and cities is not easy even at the best of times, let alone at night, dressed in costume.

Inspired to create a fun, festive, and practical costume for Émile, the maker group collected all the necessary materials to create Chad: polystyrene for the castle to surround the wheelchair, thermoplastic to form the dragon head, silk and green polylactic acid (PLA) filament to 3D print the dragon scales, an umbrella to build the wings, foam to build parts of the costume and a set of Hallowing — programmable eyes for the dragon.

This Halloween, thanks to the ingenuity and skills of this dedicaged groupe of people, Émile will BE Chad the Dragon. He will also show off the amazing creation during the Montréal Maker Faire, produced by Concordia University on Nov. 16-17.

Rolloween Project

Magic Wheelchair is a non-profit organization “that builds epic costumes for kiddos in wheelchairs — at no cost to families.” The organization started with Ryan Weimer whose son was born with spinal muscular dystrophy. When his son wanted to be a pirate for Halloween, Ryan decided to turn his wheelchair into a pirate ship.

Following the inspiration of Magic Wheelchair, Concordia University’s Education Makers and Montréal’s Duct Tapers Anonymous decided to get together to build a wheelchair Halloween costume. Education Makers had experimented with 3D printing dragon scales on fabric and with thermoplastic. Duct Tapers Anonymous offered up a wealth of know-how ranging from handymen, engineers, sculptors and seamstresses.

This project is exactly what Maker Culture is all about – seeing a challenge and turning it on its head! Disrupting how things might conventionally be done. The Rolloween project is a perfect example.

A boy who simply wanted to be a dragon for Halloween helped spur much-needed change in Halloween costume design, encouraging inclusiveness and respect for differences in the tradition of Halloween.

Halloween is only a couple of weeks away, plenty of time to create some pretty nifty, interactive, and spooky decorations that will have your friends and family jumping!

Of all the holidays, Halloween is perhaps the most fun for makers – a true makers holiday, really! So, to inspire the spooky, creepy maker in you take a look at the following fun ideas, making creative and scary use of Arduino and Raspberry PI to get the juices flowing:

Raspberry Pi and projectors make this house sing the Monster Mash

This is something of the ultimate in Halloween decorating – bringing the entire house to life to sing a fun, Halloween classic.

Through the use of Raspberry Pi and a few projectors, Twitter user @Firr was able to create this fun and impressive Halloween project using two Raspberry Pis, three projectors, some speakers, and “a mess of HDMI cables”.

One Pi handles the eyes using an HDMI splitter to project the same video of moving eyes onto a pair of windows.

The second Pi does the mouth which is a custom animation created in After Effects. This also handles the audio which is output to some party speakers playing the classic song:

Haunted Jack-in-the-Box – Raspberry Pi

This project uses a Raspberry Pi and face detection using the Pi camera to determine when someone is looking at it. This look like a great way to scare your friends! You can make your own – learn more about it HERE.

Magic Scare Mirror

Another great project to scare the pants of your visitors. It wouldn’t be Halloween without the evil spirits – make your own!

Have fun with this Lego arachnid controlled with your smartphone!

Whether you like spiders or not, this easy project is a ton of fun, bringing your Lego spider project – or any Lego project, really – to life.

This project is also rather timely as, now with the school year back in full swing and thoughts of RoboGames and Science Fair start to percolate, it provides a little maker inspiration in plenty of time.

Just beware, with this project you will have to glue your Lego bricks together as the spider, or probably anything you decide to make, will NOT move gently, and without glue will fall apart within only a few feet of walking!

The Simplest Way to Build A Raspberry Pi-Powered Amazon Echo

The Amazon Echo can be a great device to have in your home. Upon voice command, it is capable of voice interaction, music playback, making to-do lists, setting alarms, streaming podcasts, playing audiobooks, and providing weather, traffic and other real-time information. It can also control several smart devices acting as a home automation hub; controlling the temperature of your home, for instance.

However, much like all of our other fun and convenient little gadgets, it comes at a price. Ranging from $50 to $150, it can be something of an expensive convenience, particularly if you’re not quite sold on its value.

If you’ve any Maker proclivities, though, and you’d like to see if there’s a DIY alternative, here’s your answer: through the wonders of the Raspberry Pi, here’s how you can create your own, fully-functional Amazon Echo.

A brand of smart speaker developed by the innovative folks at Amazon, the Amazon Echo (or simply Echo) connects to the voice-controlled intelligent personal assistant service Alexa.

Remarkably, this DIY Echo works just like the real device, activated simply by saying the wake word “Alexa”.

While other DIY versions make use of Amazon’s official resources, this project utilizes a GitHub project called Alexa Pi. This installs the identical Alexa voice service that Amazon uses onto your Raspberry Pi.

What you’ll need for your DIY Alexa:

A Raspberry Pi is at the top of the list and here are the rest of the components required:

A USB Microphone (I used this cheap $6 mic, but pretty much any USB mic seems to work. The $8 Playstation Eye seems to work especially well if you’re looking for a slight upgrade) If you’re using the Raspberry Pi Zero W you’ll also need a MicroUSB-USB adapter.

Speakers (any powered speaker does the job, I decided to use a UE Mini Boom because I already owned it and even when it’s plugged into the Pi, it still works as a Bluetooth speaker).

A Keyboard and Mouse for setup (or use SSH, Adafruit’s Pi Finder makes this project much easier to do from your main computer because you can copy/paste the longer commands).

Step One: Register for a Free Amazon Developer Account

First up, before you start assembling anything, you’ll need to register for a free Amazon Developer Account, and create a profile for your DIY Echo.

Click “Add Another” and add in http://your.raspberrypi.ip.address:5050/code once again replacing your.raspberrypi.ip.address with your own info. Click Next when you’re done.

The Device Details tab is next. It doesn’t matter much what you enter here. Pick a category, write a description, pick an expected timeline, and enter a 0 on the form next to how many devices you plan on using this on. Click Next.

Finally, you can choose to add in Amazon Music here. This does not work on the Pi powered device, so leave it checked as “No.” Click Save.

Now you have an Amazon Developer Account and you’ve created a profile for your Pi-powered Echo. It’s time to head over to the Raspberry Pi and get Alexa working.

Step Two: Install Git and AlexaPi

Next you’ll need to fire up Terminal on your Raspberry Pi because everything happens in the command line. Before you start the installation you need to update and install a couple things:

Type in sudo apt-get install update and press Enter to make sure your version of Raspbian is up to date. Let it do its thing here.

Finally, type in sudo git clone https://github.com/alexa-pi/AlexaPi.git and press Enter to clone the AlexaPi GitHub repository. Again, give it a second to download and do its thing.

That’s it for the downloading portion, onward to actually installing it.

Step Three: Run the AlexaPi Installation Script

Next, you’ll run an installation script. This automates the installation of everything else you need to get your Echo up and running.

Type in sudo ./AlexaPi/src/scripts/setup.sh and press Enter.

You’ll be asked a series of questions. If you’re using the Raspberry Pi, just press Enter for both the operating system and device prompts. The last question asks if you want to add AirPlay support. If you have an iOS device, this makes it so you can easily stream music from your iPhone to your DIY Echo over Airplay. The script will then download a bunch of software for the next 5-10 minutes, so go ahead and relax for a bit.

Eventually, you’ll be asked to enter in your Amazon developer information. Type in the Device Type ID and Security Profile Description you made way back in step one (we used AlexaPi). Next, you’ll need to enter in all those long, complicated numbers for your Profile ID, Client ID, Client Secret.

Finally, the last thing you need to do is authorize your device. You only need to do this once. Head back to your main computer and open up a web browser. Than type in http://your.raspberrypi.ip.address:5050replacing your.raspberryi.ip.address with your Raspberry Pi’s IP address from earlier. You’ll then need to log into your Amazon account. After that, you’ll see an authorization token.

That’s it, the Alexa voice service is now installed on your Raspberry Pi. You just need to start the service. You can either just reboot your device completely, or type in sudo systemctl start AlexaPi.service and press Enter to start it.

Go ahead and try it, say “Alexa” into the mic, and it should reply back with a “Yes?”

If it’s not working, you can type in sudo systemctl status AlexaPi.service and press Enter to check the status.

Alexa will start up automatically when you reboot your device or if the power goes out for some reason, so you shouldn’t ever have to think about it again.

Enter the world of e-textiles and wearables with Fabtronic Sewing Kits!

Custom reusable parts that allow you to make and remake as many times as you want!

Electronic technology and wearables are becoming all the rage!

What began as watches and fitness trackers is evolving quickly to include e-fashion and e-textiles as well. Not only are they fun to wear, but they’re also a fun and creative activity while being a terrific way to get the basic foundation of electronics as well.

Smart Garments do what traditional fabrics cannot!

Electronic textiles, also known as smart garments, smart clothing, smart textiles, or smart fabrics, are fabrics that enable digital components such as a battery and a light (including small computers), and electronics to be embedded into them.

Smart textiles are fabrics that have been developed with new technologies that provide added value to the wearer. Pailes-Friedman of the Pratt Institute states that “what makes smart fabrics revolutionary is that they have the ability to do many things that traditional fabrics cannot, including communicate, transform, conduct energy and even grow”.

Smart textiles is typically broken into two categories: aesthetic and performance enhancing.

Aesthetic includes fabrics that light up and fabrics that can change colour. Some of these fabrics gather energy from the environment by harnessing vibrations, sound or heat, reacting to these inputs. The colour changing and lighting scheme can also work by embedding the fabric with electronics that can power it.

Performance enhancing smart textiles are intended for use in athletics, extreme sports and military applications. These include fabrics designed to regulate body temperature, reduce wind resistance, and control muscle vibration – all of which may improve athletic performance.

If you’re just learning how to sew and want to learn a few basic electronics too, Fabtronic Sewing Kits are a really great way to get started.